Where the Light Fell

by Philip Yancey

It was by following the sun’s rays that I reached the sun. —Leo Tolstoy, in Tolstoy Remembered by Tatyana Tolstoy

Pacific Garden Mission, which he knew about from its popular program, Unshackled. “The longest running radio drama in history,” it mostly told stories of bums and addicts converted to faith at a homeless shelter founded by the evangelist Dwight L. Moody.

“But I haven’t yet found a philosopher who tells you how to get rid of guilt. Only God can do that. I sense God is after you, Marshall.”

They felt his pulse and checked his temperature, and then for some reason they turned my father over on his stomach, the worst thing you can do to a polio patient. He took one more breath, his last.

My father isn’t even a memory, only a scar.

I do it again, several times, afraid salvation is like a vaccination that may not take. Still, I can never silence the nagging questions: Do I really mean it? Is it genuine?

Later that year, he reads us the poem If, by Rudyard Kipling. I’ve never heard anything so profound.

For men and women are not only themselves; they are also the region in which they were born, the city apartment or the farm in which they learnt to walk, the games they played as children, the old wives’ tales they overheard, the food they ate, the schools they attended, the sports they followed, the poets they read, and the God they believed in. —W. Somerset Maugham, The Razor’s Edge

I’ve grown up under the Southern myth of the “War of Northern Aggression”: Honorable gentlemen fought valiantly against overwhelming odds and lost to brutes who invaded their land and left it charred and bloody. Southern armies were led by virtuous leaders such as Stonewall Jackson, who avoided fighting on Sunday, and Robert E. Lee, who set a record for the fewest demerits by any West Point graduate. Lee’s opponent, Ulysses S. Grant, set a record for the most demerits, and spent much of the war drunk.

the South fought over the principle of states’ rights, not slavery. The right of states to make their own decisions was guaranteed by the Constitution, after all. As one of my teachers said: “Think about it—only thirteen percent of Southerners owned slaves. Would we fight a war over that? And Northerners were just as racist, and more hypocritical. They operated the slave ships and profited from the products of slave labor.”

They address Mother and me with “Yes, ma’am” and “Yes, sir.” The South sugars everything: watermelon, grits, iced tea, even its language.

I feel engulfed by a sense of revulsion, not only at what I once believed to be true but also at myself. Growing up, I swallowed the myth.

We are different, she believes, wholly dedicated to God in a way that others aren’t. They talk about avoiding the things of the world; we actually do it. They sing about the Second Coming; we expect it any day.

“those Whiskeypalians” are beyond the pale. Methodists have lost their fire, and their churches are “more like lukewarm social clubs than houses of worship.”

After each confession the camper who spoke tosses a stick into the fire, a sign of how he wants to blaze for Jesus.

health fanatic, he claims most problems can be cured by faith, fasting, and food.

staff person encourages us to carry a big red Bible on top of our schoolbooks (“Why is it red? Because it ought to be read.”)

This, too, becomes a goal: to absorb pain without succumbing to it or dishing it out in return.

It is better to ask some of the questions than to know all the answers.

In my time at the Bible college, I’ll end up hearing several hundred chapel talks. Only two speakers stand out to me: Mr. H. and Anthony Rossi, the only two to admit failure and weakness.

The ability to make a bed so tight that coins bounce off, or to polish shoes so bright that they reflect the sergeant’s face, doesn’t help a recruit on the battlefield. It does, however, reinforce a military command structure: “I am in charge, and you must do what I say.”

“I who looked for only thee, found God!”

“My mother taught me that God is no respecter of persons, so I didn’t grow up feeling inferior. I knew things were going to change someday, and I just kept plugging away.”

Reflecting on my visits, I begin to view church, like family, as a dysfunctional cluster of needy people.

came to love God out of gratitude, not fear.